Info Technology and Mental Health: A Study of Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club in the Scope of Berardi’s Theory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31185/3.3194Keywords:
info technology, acceleration, depression, semio capitalism, and Fight ClubAbstract
Throughout history technology has proven to be not only a means of progress but also a dangerous weapon of destruction. Instead of saving people's lives, technology can lead its users to be depressed and to have many mental diseases. The study argues that the mental diseases of post postmodern people is caused by info technology and acceleration of new life that affects human minds and leads people to be depressed, schizophrenic, bored and so on. The main aim of this research is to argue that these mental diseases are not a psychological state, but a defensive mechanism that the mind uses to get rid of the pressures of the new life.This paper attempts to explain the relevance of such figurations in Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club by drawing on the observations and views made by the Italian communist thinker and philosopher Franco Berardi. According to his semio-capitalism concept, which is the consuming of the human mind for the sake of capitalism, the information technologies of 21th century have separated us from our social, physical or sensual body. Fight Club exposes the darkness at the core of our new world of info technology concentrating on a depressed man just sick with his life and wants to change it.
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